coconut almond shortbread

Toasted coconut and almonds, a bain marie, and coarse sea salt can only indicate these are swank cookies. I hope you have a dishwasher, though these cookies make an excellent bribe.

The original recipe calls for cutting in the butter into the flour, a task I'm not keen on. Instead I did the classic creaming of the butter + sugar together, with pleasing results.

Coconut Almond Shortbread
Rather adapted from Pastry Studio

1 1/2 c flour
1/3 c whole almonds, toasted
1 c unsweetened coconut
1/2 c sugar
1/2 t salt
12 tbs unsalted butter ( 1.5 sticks!)
2 egg yolks
1 tsp vanilla

4 oz semisweet chocolate
coarse salt


Toss almonds, coconut, and sugar in a blender. Blend till finely ground. Careful not to make almond coconut butter, though that's probably not a bad idea either...

Combine blended ingredients, flour, and salt. In a separate bowl, cream together butter and sugar till nice and fluffy. Mix in the yolks and vanilla. Slowly stir in the dry ingredients.

Divide the dough into 2 balls, flatten each into a rectangle, wrap in plastic, then chill in fridge.

Roll out dough to 1/4-in. thickness, then cut into shape of your choice. Pop on the fridge for a few minutes if the dough is getting too sticky. Put cookies on a cookie sheet. Chill.

Heat oven to 325 F. Bake cookies 13-16 minutes, pending on size and shape of cookie, till they start looking a bit toasty. Cool completely.

In a double boiler, melt the chocolate and coat cookies. Sprinkle with coarse salt. Nom!